Playing the Game Alpha Protocol in Stereo 3D Mode with 3D Vision

I have to admit I’ve almost missed the release of the game Alpha Protocol, a somewhat of a spy role-playing game with an FPS elements or something like that. The game is based on the Unreal engine, meaning that there are some problems with stereo 3D to be expected, and it kind of reminds me too Mass Effect, but very vaguely. But first, lets start with the basic story of the game:

In the near future, worldwide political tensions are at a breaking point when a commercial airliner is shot down by a U.S. missile over Eastern Europe, killing all aboard. The U.S. government claims no involvement, and dispatches Agent Michael Thorton to investigate and bring those responsible to justice. As the first modern day spy role-playing game, Alpha Protocol offers unprecedented control over the development of Thorton’s abilities and his interactions with other characters. Upgrade skills such as physical combat, weapons mastery, cutting-edge technology and even seduction as you grow in experience and complete missions.

Now regarding the stereoscopic 3D support of Alpha Protocol with 3D Vision. First of all there was no 3D Vision profile available for it in the latest beta drivers, although the default settings it seemed to look more or less acceptable in S3D mode. Starting with the in-game menu where if you increase the depth over the default minimum, the menu elements become messed up – displaced and cut from the sides, so you need to stay to low depth level. When yo start the game very little ghosting is visible with minimal depth, the game looks Ok with that setting at first look, and of course ghosting increases with the depth level – more depth more visible ghosting. It turns out however that shadows are rendered incorrectly, but luckily you can disable the Dynamic Shadows from the Options menu in order to fix this issue, and this is also resulting in ghosting becoming less apparent. You can also disable the Motion Blur, it creates weird feeling when moving in stereo 3D mode at least form me, otherwise it does not bring visual problems. You may also disable the Depth of Field Effect as it sometimes behaves quite strangely in stereo 3D mode, but if you have no trouble with it you can leave it on. Now a more serious issue is the fact that the HUD is rendered in 2D (at screen depth) and this is a problem, especially because the action commands and the dialogs can be hard to focus with higher separation of the background objects. The crosshair is as expected also rendered in 2D at screen level. But with the above suggestions and a custom convergence settings and at low depth level the game can still achieve quite good results in terms of depth and a little bit of pop-out effect when played in stereo 3D mode, so it becomes quite comfortable to play.